limits for google sitemaps

what size limits are there for google xml sitemaps

[sallam]

Greetings

Are there any limits regarding the file size or the number of links for a google xml sitemap?
My sitemap index has 2 pages, one of them has 21,000 links and has a file size of 3MB
Is that acceptable by google?

[sallam]

anyone?

[Ankhenaton]

The limit is 50.000 Urls after that you get sitemap1 2 3 etc. No problem having several.

[johan]

3MB for 21,000 links is allot! Try removing all white space and tabbing.

[sallam]

You're right, I also thought its too big.
The script that I'm using for my IPB forum produce a daily sitemap. Each url has a the following info produced:

- <url>
- <loc>
[mydomain.com...]
</loc>
<lastmod>2005-10-15T0:18:17+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>0.5</priority>
</url>

Are all those info necessary to google? you think I better reduce one or 2 lines to keep the file size smaller?

[johan]

You only need the header stuff and <loc> (You can even use you RSS 2.0 feed if it maps the whole site). You can create your own dynamic sitemap if you use a database (very easy).

View the source in notepad and make sure there is no white space.

I did not use the last modified field because it would only work if I change the content from the database and not register site changes such as navigation and SEO changes.